


soft to the touch, feels like love, knew it as soon as I felt it

by buckybunnyteeth



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Eliot's Family, Family Feels, Fluff and Angst, Horses, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Indiana Farmers, M/M, Mostly Fluff, Past Child Abuse, Post-Season/Series 04, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery, References to Drugs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-08
Updated: 2019-04-08
Packaged: 2020-01-06 21:40:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18396881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buckybunnyteeth/pseuds/buckybunnyteeth
Summary: They need a place to hide as the Library closes in on them.So Eliot takes them home. To Indiana.





	soft to the touch, feels like love, knew it as soon as I felt it

**Author's Note:**

> i promise there are no homophobic relatives in this. its actually a pretty fluffy happy fic i think.
> 
> Edit; I should note this i not a fix it or redemption for Eliot's terrible dad or anything. I've just written one of his brothers as a nice guy. No homophobic characters appear in the story

"There are darknesses in life and there are lights, and you are one of the lights, the light of all lights."

\- Dracula, Bram Stoker

 

As usual, Eliot is staring at Quentin without looking at him.

He has been back in control of his body for four weeks now, and the universe isn’t giving them a break.

They foiled the Library’s evil plan to become gods, banished The Monster and his sister, and to top it all off they even managed to unchain all of magic. And then, even better, he got five minutes alone with Quentin.

But they hadn’t known about the magic battery that Everett had been feeding ever since he took control of magic. And they hadn’t known that he would eat that magic and turn himself into the Niffin of all Niffins. That he would use everything Alice gave to the Library to his advantage.

They got a message from Penny 40, that Hades had intervened at the last second and made it so Everett couldn’t leave the Neitherlands branch. But he was still an almost all-powerful being, with no conscience.

He had been able to predict their movements and set Liberians on them whenever they went outside the safety of the apartment.

He had sworn to kill them all, that they are disorderly and had no place in his world. and today he had almost killed Kady.

Eliot flicks his eyes to look at her. She has a bandage wrapped all up her arm and drawn with healing Sigels. Alice and Julia think she will make a full recovery, but she was still hurt. And everyone could see the writing on the wall.

Which is why everyone is gathered on the absurdly large couch in the apartment for a family meeting. Except for Eliot who had stayed in the kitchen eating the cornflakes he had been trying to eat for two hours now. The Monster had taken a lot from him. His appetite for one.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Quentin cast a look at him and shivers.

The ability to be touched, for another.

“Hedges are reporting Librarians all over Manhattan, in Jersey, all over the state,” Penny 23 sighs, “Always in pairs, and they are throwing around battle magic without caring who sees.”

“Marina’s gone underground,” Julia adds, “Her and every other high-level hedge. It’s making a lot of people out there scared.”

Kady rubs her bandage.

“Its what they want,” she says, with a faraway look on her face, “They want us afraid, so we do something stupid and they have a legitimate reason to wipe us out. Or control us.”

“What’s important is that they have us cornered,” Alice cuts in, face pinched with worry, “We can’t leave the apartment without Librarians tracking us down, we can’t do any Large convocations without them detecting us, they’ve grounded Penny-”

Two weeks ago, that Australian bastard had caught up to Penny and branded him with a seal that had cut off his Traveling abilities. They still haven’t figured out how to reverse it.

“-and they have kill orders out on all of us, we…” she huffs, “… we are cut off from Brakebills, Zelda has vanished. We are just _stuck_.”

Eliot winces.

He came out of one cage and into a noose. One that slowly slips around all their necks every second they stay in New York.

Quentin comes to the same realization as him.

“We can’t stay in New York.”

They all look at him.

“We just,” Quentin swallows, “Every second we stay here they get closer and closer and it's just- we are going to wind up dead if we stay, so we have to go.”

“But-,” Josh says with a slight panic in his voice, “Where would we go?”

“Well, Fillory is out,” Margo answers from behind her coffee cup, “The Library has no problem hopping over there to fuck up our shit.”

“And it doesn’t matter anyway, the fight is here,” Kady insists.

“The fight is nowhere if we are dead.”

Eliot has never heard Quentin speak in such a hard voice, not in this life. And from the look on Kady’s face neither has she. After a moment his face softens, and he pinches the bridge of his nose.

“Hedges are dying and disappearing everywhere, and I know this is your home but …” he shudders out a sigh, “Kady, I can’t let you die.”

Kady looks honestly shocked for a moment. Eliot can sympathize. Getting the full blast of Q’s emotions when you are used to a healthy diet of repression and sarcasm can be shocking. She composes herself though and nods, looking away out the window.

“So, we leave,” Margo nods, “Retreat now, come back ready to chop off dicks. I can get behind that.”

“That’s all well and good, but it won’t work,” Alice huffs, “Everett isn’t Zelda, he will have read all of our books by now. He knows every place he would go to hide, all the places we would go to feel safe.”

“You changed the ending’s though, right?” Julia asks, “Won't that help us?”

“He might not be able to see where we are going, but he knows where we have been. He will have Librarians waiting everywhere we would want to go.”

An idea forms, slowly at first and then with the pain of a twisting knife. Eliot puts down his spoon.

“Anywhere we would _want_ to go.”

The other look at him.

Eliot stands up from the kitchen island and walks to stand behind the couch.

“So, let’s go somewhere we would never want to go.”

The others frown, all except Margo who goes wide-eyed and sits up ramrod straight.

“ _No_.”

“Bambi-”

“No, Eliot. It’s not an option.”

“What are you talking about?” Quentin asks.

Eliot sighs and digs his fingers into the fabric of the couch. Words are hard to form these days. It's like his mouth got used to another speech pattern and now it doesn’t remember him.  He has to think about each word so carefully.

“You can all come home … with me.”

Quentin’s eyes go wide to match Margo’s.

“Home?” Julia frowns, “Where is that, the Hamptons?”

Eliot chuckles.

“That’s what I want people to think,” He admits, “But no, and you can't ever repeat this to anyone else for as long as you live, okay? Good- I grew up on a farm in Indiana.”

There is a pregnant pause.

And then snorted laughter.

Because his friends are assholes.

“Indiana?” Josh squawks between chuckles, “Dude how could- how is that possible?”

“I never would have guessed,” Kady agrees.

“But, wouldn’t that defeat the purpose?” Alice cuts through the laughter, “They would think to check your childhood home.”

“Not when they know how much I hate the place where my father tried to beat the gay out of me.”

The laughter abruptly stops. He was trying to be flippant, sarcastically unaffected. Maybe he has forgotten how to be that person as well because all of his friends are looking at him with wide sad eyes.

“Fuck,” Penny breathes.

“El, we had no idea-”

Eliot waves away her apology.

“I didn’t want you too,” he nods, “but the point is that I swore I would never go back, and I haven’t since the day I turned eighteen. If Everett has read through all my childhood traumas, he will know I would never willingly set foot in that tractor pulled hell hole ever again.”

“Which is why we aren’t going back.”

Eliot sighs. They aren’t getting it. His words aren’t coming out right, or maybe they are just being overprotective again.

Like how Margo hand fed him for three days straight because she was so afraid that he was going to choke.

Or how Quentin cut his hair for him because he was afraid of Eliot being alone with scissors.

Perhaps they think this is another self-harm warning signal they should be watching for.

But it isn’t. this is something else.

“Margo-”

“She’s right,” Quentin cuts him off, face set stonily, “We’ll find another place, there has to be somewhere-”

“I can’t fight. Q,” Eliot cuts in, hating the desperate tone in his voice, “I am useless to all of you while you go out and risk your lives because of what that _thing_ did to me.”

Quentin looks at him shocked.

Anger comes quicker than any other emotion these days. Before apathy or sarcasm or happiness. Though from memory, happiness has never in his life come quickly.

Eliot sighs again and closes his eyes. Looking at them all suddenly hurts.

“I can’t fight but I can protect you all in this small way. Please. I-”

The words choke up in his throat and he has to swallow a few times to dislodge it.

“-I can’t just sit back and watch you all die.”

There is another weighted silence. Then a warm hand is brushing the wisps of his hair away from his face. For the first time in weeks, he doesn’t flinch away from the physical contact. Perhaps he is too drained to.

He opens his eyes to see Quentin sitting up on the back of the couch, so he is level with Eliot’s face. It makes a soft smile come to his lips. His love is so short.

“Okay,” Quentin says in that whisper-soft voice he uses when he is being extra kind, “We’ll go. But if it hurts too much- if anyone tries to _hurt_ you-”

One of Margo’s axes thumps down onto the coffee table.

“We’ll gut the bitch.”

Eliot smiles a real grin this time.

These two people who hold him up and love him so much. It makes no sense to him. But he is too selfish a soul to ever point that out to them, lest they leave.

“Okay,” Penny cuts in, “Oh small thing though, how are we going to get to Indiana?”

Oh. Eliot didn’t think about that part. Spontaneous chivalry has its drawbacks.

Josh jumps up from the couch, an excited grin on his face.

“Wait- I have just the thing!”

 

The thing is a rolling stones style tour bus. That used to belong to Bacchus.

A friend of Josh’s drives the huge thing out to a deserted lot in Jersey and after packing their things they go out there as a group. Eliot carries Kady’s bag for her and she rolls her eyes but doesn’t stop him.

They all stand there and stare in wonder at the gratuitous behemoth. And the airbrushed art on the side.

“Is that a-”

“Sexy lady wizard. Yep.”

“And she’s-”

“Oh god, that’s graphic.”

“And the goat-”

“It belonged to Bacchus, guys,” Josh throws his arms up, “What do you expect?”

“Not airbrush art of sexy lady wizards having an orgy with-”

“Okay, okay,” Josh sighs, “Can we move past the mural?”

“It’s burned into my brain. Bacchus was a freak.”

Inside is decked out, with faux fur bench seats and shining black surfaces. Its-

“A strip club,” Kady grimaces, “On wheels.”

“Yeah, and it also has enough bunkbeds and booze to get us all to Indiana,” Josh pulls a curtain back at the end of the bus to show the beds and the entrance to the bathroom, “Not to mention its magically enchanted to be bigger on the inside so we aren’t all crammed in like sardines.”

Margo looks around and nods.

“Okay,” she says, “It’s a little Mick Jagger, but it will do. Good job, Josh.”

Eliot almost laughs at how Josh preens under her praise. Instead, he smirks at Margo and she rolls her eyes at him.

They all get loaded onto the bus pretty quickly, no one really bought a lot with them. The biggest hassle is getting the trunk of spell books up the stairs, but that gets easier when Margo suddenly goes ‘Oh shit, right’ and levitates the thing in. Poor Q flops down onto one of the seats, all red-faced and sweaty for nothing.

Josh drives them out of Jersey and after that, they take it in shifts. It takes about twelve hours to drive from New York to Indiana on average. But they aren’t going on any logical route. They take back roads and dead ends because it’s the opposite of what the Library would do.

When its Quentin’s turn, somewhere near midnight when they are driving through a Podunk town that is filled with endless corn and only has two sets of traffic lights, and Eliot goes to sit up front with him. The others are all in varying stages of sleep in the beds out back, but Eliot can’t close his eyes.

Most nights he can’t sleep. There is always that drop of fear in his stomach, that terror that when he closes his eyes he will be trapped again.

He slips into the passenger seat, scuffing his shoes before he sits down because he knows the Monster just used to appear and Quentin still jumps sometimes if he doesn’t hear people coming.

“Hey,” Q says without taking his eyes off the road.

“Hey,” Eliot looks out at the noir toned corn, “Tired yet?”

“I’m good,” a smirk tints his lips, “and we voted that you can’t have a shift, remember?”

Eliot rolls his eyes.

“You drive one Prius into a lake, and no one lets you forget it,” he sighs dramatically, “Do you mind if I keep you company up here?”

“No, I always want you around. You know that.”

Its always hard to breathe when Quentin does that. When he says something so devastating in a casual tone like it’s a truth of the universe. The sky is blue, bell bottoms are hideous, and Quentin Coldwater always wants him around.

Eliot curls his hand under his chin and smiles softly.

When he got back and he was given those few minutes with Quentin he had clutched his shoulders so tight, so afraid Quentin was going to disappear and said ‘ _I was wrong, and I’m sorry and I love you. I love you. I love you_ ’.

And, to his surprise, Quentin had broken into a grin and said in an awestruck voice ‘ _I love you too_ ’.

It was more than Eliot could have hoped for after he squashed his heart. More than he ever thought he would get.

But it hasn’t been very storybook. Eliot had freaked out the first time Quentin tried to kiss him, to hold his hand. Touch felt like an invasion, like sandpaper against his skin. It made Eliot feel sick, but the isolation of not being touched made him feel worse. He’s getting better, can be touched sometimes now, but they still haven’t tried for kissing again. Haven’t tried for sex, though Eliot craves the intimacy like an addict.

( _which might not be far off_ , he thinks late at night when he is alone with his own thoughts, _you used alcohol, drugs, and sex to cope. Now you’ve gotten sober and you can’t fuck without having a panic attack. Is that irony or just tragedy?_ )

It took days, but wonderful Q had found a compromise. Found a way for them to share intimacy without even touching.

“Tell me a story, Quentin.”

Quentin smiles. He delights in a story, and when he sits across from Eliot smiling as he tells him about Clock trees, and magic wardrobes, it's almost as wonderful as being touched.

“So, have you heard about when Jane Chatwin met the Mermaids of the southern isles?”

Eliot has in fact. He got all the books on tape, honest to god tapes when he was eleven.

But he just grins and says;

“No. Tell me.”

Eliot falls asleep curled up in the passenger’s seat to the ebb and flow of Quentin’s voice. And mercifully, he doesn’t dream.

 

They get to Indiana after much driving and even more coffee.

Kady takes the wheel, all healed up now and calls Eliot to the passenger seat because-

“What do I know about the middle of shit-all Indiana?”

Eliot directs her through the state, past the farms and towns and … farms. And all the while he forces down every memory that tries to rear its ugly head. It’s hard and gets harder the closer they get to his hometown.

Endless fields of cattle, and corn and wheat, and fucking soybeans. They pass a truck carrying manure and Eliot gags. More than he should, given how little of the smell filters into them. Kady raises an eyebrow at him.

“I’m fine.”

She shakes her head.

“Man, I wouldn’t want to go back to some of the places I grew up.”

Eliot has to close his eyes as they pass by a soybean farm.

“But would you?” he asks, “If it meant protecting people you love?”

Kady straightens her shoulders against the wheel.

“Yeah,” she admits in a small voice, “I think I would.”

Eliot nods and goes silent. Neither of them are the kind of people to be able to stand honest emotion for too long. Kady focuses on the road. Eliot knew he liked her for a good reason, all the way back when she was a hedge witch spy.

God that feels like a million years ago.

Eventually, they get to the small town he grew up in. so small he had to get a bus an hour away to go to school. So small the post office is also the local bar, and the town hall. He swallows as he takes it all in, looking so much more run down than he remembers. Or maybe his eyes have gotten used to the more polished, the sleeker.

“Just head straight through town,” he tells Kady in an almost whisper, “When you see the big red barn turn left … we want the house at the end of the road.”

They drive closer and closer to the place he was made, where his edges were scrapped off every day so he fit into a cookie cutter that wasn’t his. Where he was forced to be unhappy, where he learned to hate himself every day and twice on Sundays-

A hand settles on his shoulder and he tenses. It squeezes and he relaxes. He knows those hands. Those hands won’t hurt him.

“There’s still time to turn back,” Quentin tells him in a whisper, “We can find somewhere else.”

Eliot covers his hand with his own and shakes his head.

“No, I can do this.”

He blinks back the tears that are starting to form in his eyes.

He thinks of everyone behind him, his weird ramshackle family that he didn’t sign up for but would die for anyway. Of Margo and Quentin, the two people he loves most in the world, and what the Library would do to them if they got their hands on them.

And then he thinks of how easily he snapped Mikes' neck.

And how no one behind him would object to him doing that to his father.

Hell, they’d help him hide the body.

They pull up to a large white turn of the century homestead. It’s the kind of farmhouse people who know nothing about farming dream of retiring to one day. Its been repainted since Eliot last saw it, and the old farming equipment that used to live on the porch has been cleared away in favor of wicker chairs and tables. There is a quilt over one of the railings, in the early stages of being repaired.

Eliot frowns. Maybe his mother had finally come into her long-absent motherhood now that all her sons were grown and gone. That would be just like her.

He gets to his feet and finds everyone standing there waiting for him.

He tries for a vapid smile, but all he can muster is a grimace.

“Well,” he claps his hands together, “We’re home. Follow me.”

Margo and Q flank him as he steps off the bus. He almost gags again when his polished shoes hit the dust, when he catches the smell of tractor oil and fucking fresh air. For a split second, he is twelve years old with a split lip and a black eye dreaming of the day when he can leave and never come back. He shakes off the memory and sets his shoulders.

He leads his group of friends up the front steps and using the momentum of them behind him he knocks on the wire door. Which is new. Dad never cared if bugs got in the house before.

Dad. Eliot wonders how he’s changed, what he will do when he opens his door and sees Eliot, his disappointment, his shame. He wonders if he will slam the door or go right for the right hook. He wonders why he is shaking more now than he ever did when they went up against the Beast.

The door opens and for a moment he swears he is going to pass out.

But it’s not his father.

It’s a woman. A woman with dark skin and dark hair peeking out the top of a gorgeous silk scarf. Eliot looks down her frankly beautiful sundress, sees that she is pregnant, and has a moment of unreality so strong he wonders if his family ever existed.

“Can I help you?” She asks.

“I-I’m sorry,” Eliot stutters, in a very Quentin like fashion, “We must have the wrong farm, I was looking for-”

“Eliot?”

The woman steps out of the doorway and looks up at him frowning before her eyes go wide, and she breaks out into a grin.

“It's you!” she laughs, throwing her arms around him, “I can’t believe it!”

Eliot tenses up all over and casts a look over his shoulder to see all his friends looking confused.

“Um, I don’t-”

The woman draws back and then shouts back into the house.

“Baby, come see who it is!”

“Oh, you really-”

There is the sound of approaching footsteps and then a familiar figure appears in the doorway.

As tall as Eliot, with his dark hair clipped close, though it still tries to curl over his ears. His ears that stick out and Eliot knows he got picked on for them all through middle school until the girls decided he was handsome freshman year. Strong quarterbacks’ shoulders, and dressed in flannel and denim, he looks just the same as he did when Eliot left.

He stares at Eliot, slack-jawed like he is seeing a ghost.

“El?”

Eliot smiles, honestly this time, even if it's timid.

“Hi, Oliie.”

Ollie laughs, shocked and then engulfs Eliot into a big bear hug. Eliot tenses all over.

“I can’t believe it!” he says as he squeezes him, “I thought I would never see you again, not after how Daddy threw you out- and you went all the way to New York and we never heard- I can’t believe it!”

He steps back, still grinning. And then he notices all the people behind Eliot and frowns, not angrily, but in that confused way Eliot remembers from when he was trying to figure out his homework.

“It’s a long story,” Eliot says, “We were sort of expecting … Dad.”

Ollie snorts.

“Daddy died.”

Eliot feels himself freeze. Right down to his bones.

“What?’

“Yeah, musta bin’ about a year, year and a half after you left, he just keeled over out in the field. Heart attack or something.”

“Huh,” Eliot says, honestly not knowing how to feel.

“Mamma didn’t wanna invite you to the funeral she uh,” Ollie swallows, looking suddenly embarrassed, “She thought you might- that maybe-”

“You would piss on his grave,” Ollie’s wife explains, not looking fussed by the mental image in the slightest, “Frankly it would have been a more fitting send-off.”

To Eliot’s surprise, Ollie doesn’t look offended by that at all.

“Why don’t you invite them inside dear,” she continues, “I was just making a roast, you can all have some. I’m Leah, buy the way.”

They follow Ollie and Leah into the house, in a confused daze. Eliot was not expecting this at all.

He also wasn’t expecting for the inside of the house to be different. Before it was utilitarian, modest and more of a barracks than a home. His mother wasn’t a homemaker, she didn’t fill the house with warmth. Modesty and a strict regiment of work and prayer were what she believed in. Not a loving hand.

But now it's all yellows and dark greens with cream white trims, doilies and flowery sofas, rich dark mahogany furniture and needle points framed on the walls. Hell, there is a china cabinet full of porcelain cats.

“Lee put her touch on the old place,” Ollie explains as he leads them into the living room at the front of the house, “The place was pretty run down. Mamma wasn’t one for decorating.”

Eliot nods dumbly. He might be in shock.

“Dad left you the farm?”

“Oh, Christ no,” Ollie laughs, “He’d disowned me before he died. On acount’a Leah.”

“Ah,” Eliot suddenly understands, “Our homophobic father had racism simmering away as well? Not shocking.”

“No, but I wasn’t gonna leave her and … well, he wasn’t my family if he expected me to change.”

Ollie looks at him, something heavy in his eyes and El has to look away. He can’t deal with all of this.

“Then how-?”

“He left it to Roger, but he has no plans on ever leaving the Navy to farm beans and tomatoes. And Willy’s in prison.”

That startles a laugh out of Eliot. His sibling who helped abuse him, who seemed to enjoy the pain he inflicted, is in prison. Maybe there is justice in the universe.

“So, Rog sold the farm to me. I was the only one with a green thumb anyway.”

“And our dear mother?”

“Moved back to Montana to live with her sister,” Ollie shakes his head, “She didn’t want anything to do with me and Leah either.”

“Not shocking.”

There is a silence, in which Ollie looks from him to the group, who have remained surprisingly silent the whole time. Not that Eliot noticed through the mental explosion he is still suffering from.

“Ollie this is the weird conglomerate of friends, classmates and former enemies that are my family,” he says, flourishing his hand around at the group, “And Josh.”

“Hey!’

“He’s kidding Hoberman,” Margo says and then extends her hand to Ollie, “Hi, I’m Margo, Eliot’s best friend and soulmate.”

Ollie shakes her hand but frowns.

“I thought you were-”

“I am,” Eliot holds a hand up, “Everyone introduce yourselves, there are too many of you and I’m kind of reeling here.”

They all introduce themselves and Ollie shakes all their hands, a kind of country politeness that makes Kady and Alice frown with suspicion.

“So,” Eliot continues when that’s all over, “We um, kinda need a place to stay for a while just to … I don’t want to say hideout-”

“You’re not on the run, are you?”

“…Not from the cops.”

Ollie frowns.

Eliot sighs. He is too emotionally drained for this.

Instead, he holds out his hand and with a focused effort (much more effort than it used to take) he does a quick gesture and makes all the books on the coffee table levitate and rearrange themselves in alphabetical order.

It’s a small spell, but Eliot instantly feels all his magical reserves deplete. It's like he’s a god damned first year all over again.

Ollie goes wide-eyed and then smiles.

“You’re a magician!”

Eliot frowns this time.

“Yes … but how do you-”

“Leah!” Ollie calls into the kitchen, “They’re like you!”

Leah comes in, sees the books floating back down and smiles at El. Then she pulls up the sleeve of her dress to show three black star tattoos.

Eliot laughs and scrapes a hand down his face. One more revelation and he is going to pass out.

“Magicians,” Leah nods, “Are you on the Library’s list?”

“Big time,” Julia answers, “They have kill orders out on all of us.”

“Jeeze,” she winces, “and you think they won’t look for you here?”

“Lee,” Ollie takes her hand, “This is the last place anyone would expect my brother to be.”

Leah nods.

“Well, I’m happy to let yall stay. Anything to screw over those fascists.”

“Oh, we don’t,” Quentin stutters from his place squeezed between Eliot and Julia on the couch, “We don’t want to impose or-or anything that would-”

Leah smiles obviously affected by the Coldwater super nerd charm.

“As long as you’re happy to help out around here you can stay as long as you want,” Leah says softly, “Now I gotta get these potatoes done for Sunday dinner.”

“Oh!” Josh lumps up from an armchair, almost startling Penny off his perch on the arm of the chair, “I can help!”

Leah looks at him skeptically as he follows her to the kitchen.

“You’ve just lost your kitchen to Hoberman,” Margo sighs as she stands up, then she smiles at Ollie, “Thank you for letting us stay.”

Ollie says something about ‘my brothers’ family is my family’, and then the others are shuffling out of the house to unload their stuff from the bus. Before he can rise to join them, Quentin stops in front of him and puts his hands on his shoulders.

“I’ll get yours- are you okay?”

Eliot looks up into his face. That cute little face, with his pinched forehead and his big honest eyes. He doesn’t know what he is. He is confused and tired and in a state of shock. But he’s not afraid. Eliot grips his hand on his shoulder and nods.

“Okay,” Quentin sighs, “But the second you aren’t-”

“I’ll collapse into your big strong arms and you can carry me away into the sunset.”

Quentin smiles down at him, cupping his face before he steps away.

“You joke. But I would.”

“I know you would, Coldwater,” Eliot laughs, “I know you would.”

 

They move into the house pretty easily. There are a couple of free rooms that Leah and Oliie shut up when they redecorated, so save on heating costs and a room that is destined to be Leah’s sewing room that has only been half renovated. They drag some blow up mattresses into them, and they make perfectly fine bedrooms. They have to double up mostly to make the room, but conveniently they are mostly already paired up. Kady and Alice get their own separate rooms.

Eliot refuses to step foot into his old room. So they put Julia and Penny in there, and Eliot gets put with Quentin in the sewing room.

After they are all moved in, and Ollie and Penny have moved the tour bus into the barn, Josh and Leah call them down to dinner. Ollie stops Eliot at the foot of the stairs, looking pained. And pained on a corn-fed farm man only means one thing; he’s about to talk about his feelings.

Eliot braces himself.

“El, I ah-” Ollie scapes hand down his face, looking down at their shoes, “I just wanted to say-”

“Ollie you really don’t-”

“-I’m sorry.”

“…Sorry?”

“I wasn’t a good brother,” Ollie looks up and to Eliot’s panic he looks close to tears, “I never tried to stop Daddy when he went after you. I didn’t stand up for you, ever, and I should of.”

Eliot feels a stab in his chest and has to force back tears of his own. He blames a lot of people for his crappy childhood. But not Ollie.

“Ollie…” Eliot shakes his head, “Dad beat you just as much as he beat me. I- we weren’t close, but that wasn’t our fault. It was his. I never- … I never hated you.”

Ollie looks at him with wide eyes and sniffs.

“You think we could be brothers now?”

The thought is scary. But he swallows and nods.

“Yeah. I could- I would like that.”

Ollie smiles, that kind of goofy smile he always wore when they were kids and he was really, truly happy. Then he pulls Eliot into another hug. This time he doesn’t freeze up. This time he hugs back.

He is suddenly filled with a kind of warmth that he usually only got from wine.

“I like Leah,” he whispers, “she seems nice.”

“She’s a spitfire,” Ollie laughs as they part, “I like that fella of yours too. Quentin was it?”

Eliot splutters.

“How- how did you-”

“Please, El,” he snorts, “boys eyes went as big as a cows every time he looked at ya.”

Eliot rubs his hands together nervously.

“And you’re okay with that?”

Ollie nods, expression soft.

“Daddy was wrong. About most everything. Only thing he was right about was when to plant a good crop. He was never right about you.”

Eliot feels choked up again.

He suddenly has an image of Ollie and the kid he is soon to have, running around the farm screeching with laughter. Just like it was like with Teddy.

He thinks his brother is going to make a good father.

 

That night Eliot lays on the blow-up mattress, with approximately a hundred yards of baby duck fabric stored above his head, and watches Quentin panic.

“I can- I can sleep on the floor, or go downstairs, or even go back to the bus I-”

“Quentin.”

“Yeah?”

“Get in here.”

Quentin hesitates and then sits down on the bed beside him.

“It won’t make you freak out. In a bed this small we're gonna touch.”

“Oh, I’m counting on it.”

Quentin tries to give him a stern look, but it just makes Eliot smile. He gave Teddy that look once when he messed up the Mosaic order. It didn’t work on him either.

“El, I don’t want to make things worse for you.”

Eliot slides a hand across the mattress and pulls on Quentin’s arm, tugging him down to lay beside him. Quentin comes easily and curls into his usual position, with one arm across Eliot’s chest, and his head resting on his shoulder.

Eliot breathes through the zings of panic that come from being touched. Recovery isn’t linear, his therapist tells him. Some days he can be touched, some days he can’t, and some days it’s a mix of both. Right now, he talks down the voice-

_Its Quentin, we love Quentin. We love getting touched by Quentin, and hopefully one day soon we’ll get to touch a whole lot more of him._

-until the panic recedes.

He sighs and slips a hand up Quentin’s back to rest of his neck, his fingers twined in his hair. Quentin makes a small happy noise and presses his face into Eliot’s shirt.

It’s the kind of warm embrace that they shared every night in Fillory-past, and Eliot’s missed it.

He lets the beating of Quentin’s heart lull him to sleep. And he doesn’t dream.

 

Life on the farm is pretty easy to settle into. They set up their research center in the barn, spread out their spell books and grimoires on a couple of old oak tables. Leah even manages to find them a few more books that might have promising leads.

Eliot spends every day in this place he hated and hates it less every day. The green of the fields, the cool mornings and golden sun. It’s so beautiful. Maybe he didn’t hate it here. Maybe he was poisoned by a bad set of parents and a town full of bullies, but this land- sometimes it reminds him so much of Fillory its ridiculous. One morning he watches a mother hen leading her babies around and he smiles, a real honest smile like he hasn’t been able to muster without concentrated effort since he was a drunk. It feels like whiplash, for this place to be beautiful now that all the horrible people have gone.

When they aren’t studying, they help on the farm. Eliot flat out refuses to do anything related to planting, harvesting, or _manure_. Ollie laughs, claps him on the shoulder and instead gives him the job of feeding Greta.

“Greta?”

“She’s a horse, a show pony Leah rescued. She got the yips, couldn’t jump and her owners wanted to put her down.”

“So, you bought her off them?”

“…Not exactly.”

Greta turns out to be a gorgeous palomino who likes to nuzzle him for apples. And he is a sucker for affection, so she gets a lot of them.

The others help in other ways, cooking for Leah, driving into town to do the market shopping, and helping with the soy beans and tomatoes. Eliot’s favourite part is when Penny and Josh crash the tractor into the gully that runs at the back of the farm, and Quentin laughs so hard he strains his vocal cords. Or when Kady and Alice get ambushed by chickens when they are trying to gather their eggs, and Julia has to come to save them with her ‘friend to all animals’ goddess powers. Margo adapts the best, which isn’t surprising. If you can adapt to Fillory you can adapt to a soy bean farm.

And that how it goes. For weeks.

Eliot gets a glimpse of what life would have been like if he’d had a decent set of parents.

As time progresses, they get closer and closer to a plan. Kady and Alice often disappear for days at a time, seeking out knowledge that will help them stop Everett, and reaching out to different Hedge communities to try and get them away from Library hot spots.

Eliot is kept out of most of the planning. Its not malicious, and its not like they stop talking when he walks in the room. They just don’t want him to do any of the heavy lifting.

“You absorbed a psychotic god into your body, El,” Margo says to him one day as they are doing Laundry, while Leah and Ollie are at neonatal classes, “We have no idea how that’s gonna affect you. Not to mention the ptsd you have so bad that your magic fritzes out.”

“I’m not sure you know how pep talks work.”

Margo throws a sock at him. And then its mate, so he can ball them together.

“I’m just saying we aren’t benching you for no reason,” she lays her head on his shoulder, “We want you to get better, El. We want you to feel better.”

“I … I just feel a little useless.”

“Useless?” Margo pulls back so he can see her raised eyebrow, “You are hiding us all in the place you hate most. You are protecting us. How is that useless?”

Eliot nods reluctantly.

“None of that,” Margo pats his cheek, “You can help us unfuck the next fuck up. When you’re better.”

Margo steps away from him then throws a sly look over her shoulder.

“And anyway, you help Q out every day.”

Eliot frowns.

“What do you mean?”

“Who else is he going to stare at longingly until he has to go jerk off in the bathroom.”

Eliot rolls his eyes and throws the balled-up socks at her back.

 

Eliot spends most of the morning in the Kitchen cooking for Leah, who is seconds away from popping and he is scared if she lifts a finger, he is going to have to help deliver his nephew on the dining room table.

After she is tired of his hovering, and he has burned a batch of muffins so bad that Josh yells at him, he gets kicked out of the kitchen.

Feeling unwilling to go back to the barn and read another dead-end story about how some Greek hero tricked a god into giving up their power, he grabs some apples and some feed and heads for Greta.

She isn’t in her pen, or in the stable. So, Eliot goes looking for her in the back fields, thinking that Ollie left her to graze before he left.

But when Eliot gets to the back paddock what he sees stops him in his tracks.

“Sweet merciful fuck,” he breathes.

Greta is in the back paddock.

With Quentin.

All saddled up Quentin is sitting on her back riding her around in circuits. Doing little trots and getting the horse to walk backwards.

If only he was wearing a billowing white shirt and ridiculously tight pants-

As he watches Quentin bends his head, his fringed falling in his eyes and being illuminated from behind by the sun and _Jesus Christ_.

Eliot has to grip the paddock fence just to stay up right.

When he was young, before he even knew how gay he was, he would dream about boys. The cute boy at church who handed out the pamphlets, the boy in his class whose smile was so crooked.

 And then, when he got into puberty, he would dream whole romance novel scenarios. Mostly about Patrick Swayze. But sometimes he would dream about a generic, but handsome man, riding in on a horse to take him away into the sunset. It wasn’t a shocking fantasy, considering the only movies allowed in his house were cowboy movies and 80’s chick flicks. But it was a nice warm fantasy that we would escape into.

So, seeing Quentin here now-

Is it tacky, to think that he is the man of his dreams?

Quentin looks up and sees him, a devastatingly handsome smile spreading across his face and well-

Well, after all that he’s been through, he’s allowed to be a little tacky. A little love struck.

Quentin and Greta come trotting over and Eliot climbs up to sit on the fence so that when they come over, they are at something like equal height.

Greta starts nuzzling him immediately. He laughs and offers her one of the apples, which she immediately starts chomping on noisily.

“So,” Eliot smiles, letting his happiness bleed into his tone, “Cowboy camp.”

Quentin ducks his head, smiling bashfully.

“I wasn’t making it up,” he shrugs, “I can lasso a calf, ride a horse, if you want me to I could even hog tie something.”

“Oh yes please.”

Quentin laughs and Eliot blushes.

“I didn’t- that was meant to stay internal.”

Quentin reaches out and cups his face and-

And Quentin isn’t the man of his dreams.

He is so much better. Because he is real, and beautiful and flawed, and such a giant nerd it chokes Eliot up sometimes. He stubborn, and prone to sadness, so empathic it hurts, and he wears his broken heart on his sleeve for everyone to see.

Eliot loves him.

So, he leans into Quentin’s hand and tells him so. Because he is allowed to now.

Quentin hums, thumb stroking over his cheek.

“I love you too.”

And he hopes his father’s homophobic ghost can see them and get another heart attack.

He leans up, enjoying being the shorter party for once, and kisses Quentin. Its not the sort of burning kiss that he used to share with his man of the moment, not the hot gasps that he and Quentin shared once upon a time when they were drunk on wine and repressed emotions. Its soft, a port in a storm. A sure, slow press of lips that says very simply-

_I love you. And I always want you around._

Its more than Eliot ever thought he would get.

Hell, he never thought he would live this long.

He slips his hand into Quentin’s hair and he laughs when they part.

“What would you say if I told you, you are fulfilling sixteen-year-old Eliot’s favourite fantasy right now?”

“You dreamed about sweaty men on horses?’

“Oh god, all the time.”

Quentin laughs and leans their foreheads together.

“Should I be wearing a Stetson.”

“Hmm, I’d like to see you in nothing but a Stetson.”

Quentin kisses him again, a quick peck on the lips.

“When you’re ready.”

Eliot nods. He isn’t ready yet.

“Hey, I might even wear spurs.”

“And you’ll ride me into the sunset?”

Quentin turns that beautiful shade of bright red that means he’s really embarrassed.

“Maybe,” he stutters, ducking down behind his fringe again, “I- I'd like that.”

Eliot feels his cheeks hurting from how wide he is smiling.

In those dark days after the Monster was gone Eliot thought he would never feel anything good ever again. But looking at Quentin now, his beautiful, embarrassed boyfriend, he should have known. Quentin worms his way into your heart and stays there, of course he would lead Eliot back to this feeling of warmth and happiness that they shared so long ago in Fillory.

It might not last, their future is so unsure.

But he is sure, right down to his bones, that he is always going to love Quentin Coldwater.

**Author's Note:**

> i am a lesbian who grew up in an abusive country environment so i can really project onto Eliot, can you tell? i haven't read the books so I only have vague info from the wiki about Eliot having three older brothers, and I wanted to give him something nice you know? so he has one good brother and he learns that farms can be okay. its a little wish fulfilly but you know. tell me what you think.
> 
> i am valaswife on tumblr if you wanna give me a follow


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